


To brighten up even your darkest night

by Tereshkova (EarthboundCosmonaut)



Series: Occasional flashes of competence [8]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Gen, Raiding the minibar, Road trip to Leeds, Workplace awkwardness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-10 05:07:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13495558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthboundCosmonaut/pseuds/Tereshkova
Summary: "I-" Nicola stares at him with a baffled, panicky look on her face and then makes a dash for the door, shoving him out of the way in her haste."Don't you fuckin' run away from me!" he shouts, following her at a walk as she dashes across the office in the direction of the ladies. "And don't try to hide from me in the fuckin' toilet! Do you really think I'm goin' to let that come between you and the bollockin' of your life?!"In which Nicola needs a friend and Malcolm comes over all Carole King.





	1. Some things cannot be unheard

Within fifty minutes, Malcolm has had enough of the Regional Development Initiative launch. The lights are too bright, the sound of a hundred braying political types hobnobbing with each other too loud, and the smell of warm white wine turns his stomach. He goes in search of some quiet on the deserted second floor of the super ministry.

It’s not true to say that he’s hiding. Malcolm Tucker doesn’t hide. Malcolm Tucker lies in wait, ready to pounce on unsuspecting morons. Or, on this occasion, leaves a noisy launch party in search of a quiet room so that he can devote his entire, fearsome attention to the acerbic email he is in the process of drafting. And if the best place to do that happens to be a junk room, and if the best place to sit in the junk room is behind a stack of box files, then that’s not hiding - that's just pragmatism. It’s an important email after all - it's only a slight exaggeration to say that the future of Western democracy may hang on it.

Which is why he’s fucking annoyed when the door slams open and a woman giggles.

“Christ,” says a man’s voice, low and gravelly. “Your arse looks fucking indecent in that dress.”

The door thuds shut. It hasn’t even clicked closed when he hears the unmistakable urgent, wet sound of two people kissing. Or trying to suck each other's faces off. It's followed by the rustle of clothing and a woman’s breathy moans. Malcolm presses his fingers into his temples. Jesus, he’d come to another floor to get away from the crowds and now he’s trapped himself in a fucking porn set. Does he stay where he is? He can sit it out if they’re just going to have a quick fumble, but he refuses to be subjected to a couple of Westminster twats going at it like fucking rabbits. He decides to give it a moment and see which direction their encounter seems to be going in. He doesn’t want to be found lurking in a junk room if he can avoid it.

The kissing stops for a moment. “No, no,” the woman whispers, breathing heavily. “Don’t smudge my makeup. We’ve got to go back in a minute.” Thank fuck at least one of them has half an ounce of sense.

The man chuckles. “Well there’s plenty of other places I can put my mouth…how about here?” The voice sounds familiar, but that’s hardly surprising given that Malcolm knows almost everyone in Westminster. Without more to go on than some mumbled foreplay he can't place it.

The woman lets out a yelp that tapers into a moan.

“Do you like that?” his voice is muffled.

“Oh God, you know I do.”

Malcolm inwardly groans. Christ alive - whoever this pair are, the noises coming out of that woman’s mouth are obscene. There is more rustling of clothing and a muffled thud, and with a sinking feeling he realises that they’re not going to stop at kissing.

"Can you feel that?" asks the man. The woman breathes a groan of affirmation. "That's all for you. You fucking do that to me."

He presses his palms against his ears. This is intolerable. Not only is he stuck in an amateur porno, but it's not even a well scripted porno.

There's more rustling and the sound of a zip opening. The man hisses sharply and then groans. “Hmm, fuck that's good. That feels so good. Such a good girl. My dirty little Nicky.”

And suddenly Malcolm realises with horror where he knows that voice from.  The couple pawing at each other five meters away is none other than Nicola Murray and her bloody feckless, apparently not-so-impotent wankstain of a husband.

“For fuck’s sake!” he roars, leaping out from behind the stack of box files so violently that it topples over. “Have you two not learnt your fuckin’ lesson yet?!”

Nicola lets out a high pitched shriek at the sudden interruption. The scene that confronts him is not edifying. She is sitting on top of a stack of archive boxes, her legs draped around her husband's waist. James's mouth is latched onto her neck and the fingers of Nicola's right hand are woven in his hair, holding his face against her throat. James' hands are hidden beneath the skirt of her dress and Malcolm has a horrible suspicion that her left hand is down his trousers. A suspicion that is confirmed when they pull apart and James struggles to fasten his flies over the bulge in his crotch.

"Can you not keep yer dick in yeh pants for five minutes?!" Malcolm demands. "Was a clap-ridden second rate escort belittlin' you in the fuckin' national press not enough of a warning? And as for you!" He jabs his finger at Nicola. "Have yeh got no fuckin' self-respect?! Less than a month ago you were on the verge of divorce and now yer lettin' him bang you in a fuckin' storage room? Christ, listening to the two of you is like listening to a couple of retarded guinea pigs humpin' each other's brains out. Except that _one_ retarded guinea pig has more brain cells than the two of you put together."

Nicola has that rabbit in the headlights look, her hands hurriedly smoothing her skirt down over her thighs. A flush of embarrassment is creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. James seems to feel no such sentiment – presumably he has passed beyond the point of feeling embarrassment at the prospect of other people knowing about his sexual activities.

"What business of yours is it what we get up to, you overbearing prat? Are you telling me I can't even sleep with my own _wife_ now?"

His plummy, over-confident voice sets Malcolm's teeth on edge. "When yer doing it in a fuckin' storeroom in a government building you _make_ it my business! The amount of noise you two were making, anyone in a hundred meter radius could have fuckin' heard yeh."

"Except no one but you is _within_ a hundred meters of this room. The whole floor is deserted – believe me, we were looking for somewhere where we _wouldn't_  be interrupted. What are you even doing in here, for God's sake?"

"I was enjoyin' some fuckin' quiet while I sorted out another mess made by another fuckin' incompetent MP. The last thing I need is the pair of you barging in like horny teenagers!"

"I'm sorry," Nicola mutters, leaning on James for support as she slides down off the boxes. "We'll go back to the launch."

"Not like that yeh fuckin' won't," Malcolm informs her, stepping over the toppled files so that he can loom over her more effectively. He might have interrupted them before their activities reached their horrifying conclusion, but you wouldn't know it from looking at her. "Yeh look like yeh've been attacked with a fuckin' vaccuum cleaner."

Nicola claps her hand to her neck, where a column of red love bites is forming on the delicate skin. One of them is framed by a ring of tooth marks. James places an arm around her shoulder, drawing her to him with a smug expression. "Well then, we'll just go home shall we?"

He waves a dismissive hand at them. "Aye, you do that! And make sure nobody fuckin' sees yeh on the way out - yeh look like fuckin' delinquents."

Nicola is unable to meet his eye as she turns to the door. He has to admit, though, that her arse really does look lovely in that dress. James smirks when he catches him looking at his wife's backside. He places a proprietorial hand on her buttock and gives Malcolm a smug grin. "Enjoy the rest of your evening Malc. Hiding in the store room."

"Fuck off, yeh coke addled pervert."

He hears James' gleeful laughter as he walks down the corridor and Nicola shush-ing him. Malcolm locks the door behind them and plonks himself on a discarded office chair. Of all the things that could have turned a shitty policy launch into an irredeemable nightmare, being stuck in a windowless room while the Murrays rutted like fuckin' deer was it.

He's made a genuine effort to support Nicola since the Albany expenses fiasco – checking up on her a couple of times a week, keeping the twats at DoSAC in line - Christ, he'd even brought her a cappuccino on one particularly stressful day. Even though he knows that it's totally irrational, the ease with which she seems to have allowed her twat of a husband back into her knickers feels like a betrayal. At the very least, she could have made sure that their revolting escapades were confined to their house. He's not even sure he wants to haul her across the carpet for it tomorrow. He'd rather forget the entire incident had ever taken place. The very idea of the two of them together turns his stomach. Malcolm jams his fingers into his eye sockets, trying to exorcise the sound of James Murray crooning " _My dirty little Nicky_ " from his memory.


	2. Better out than in

As it turns out, Malcolm needn't have worried about any awkward encounters because Nicola avoids him like the plague for the next three weeks. She always seems to be somewhere else when he's in the vicinity of DoSAC, and she all but turns in the other direction and flees when there is even the slightest risk of their paths crossing at Number 10. For as long as she's staying on top of the job he allows it, because he'd really rather not think about that night either. But after a series of cock ups in quick succession, he reluctantly accepts that he's going to have to intervene. Which is how he ends up in her office one Tuesday morning.

"What the fuck was that, Nic'la?! I sent you to a school because you're meant to fuckin' know how to talk to kids. After all, you've pushed out enough of them to repopulate the earth in the event of a fuckin' nuclear holocaust."

To say that Nicola hasn't been on the ball recently is like saying that the Gallagher brothers haven't been getting on – the band's broken beyond repair and Britpop will never be the same again. She'd fluffed an appearance on Woman's Hour - a show with an interview style so benevolent that questions are practically accompanied by hugs - last week.  At the most recent PMQs she'd blanked on the previous year's immigration stats - despite having been given a crib note on them by Ollie - and had to agree to provide a written response. And this morning she'd hit a new low when she'd panicked during a visit with a class of six year olds and ended up leaving the room for 15 minutes in order to be coaxed back into something even remotely resembling sanity by Glenn.

He rounds on her. She is leaning against her desk with the posture of someone who really wishes they weren't in the room.

"For Christ's sake," Malcolm continues, venting some of the frustration that's been building up over the last few weeks. "For once Terri's been actually doing some fuckin' work and setting you up with soft appearances that will show that you're a fuckin' decent human being after Rugger Bugger shat all over your reputation, and you're comin' across like a mental patient who hasn't been taking their meds!"

Nicola stares at him wordlessly, her hand pressed against her stomach.

"Well!? Shall I send a fuckin' sex doll with a birds nest on its head out for your next public engagement? Because it couldn't do a worse job than you're doing right now."

"I-" Nicola stares at him with a baffled, panicky look on her face and then makes a dash for the door, shoving him out of the way in her haste.

"Don't you fuckin' run away from me!" he shouts, following her at a walk as she dashes across the office in the direction of the ladies. "And don't try to hide from me in the fuckin' toilet! Do you really think I'm goin' to let that come between you and the bollockin' of your life?!"

He glares at the gaping DoSAC staffers as he stalks through the office. "Don’t you lot have some fuckin' work to pretend to be doing? We're in the middle of the Great Recession you know, and you lot are first in the fuckin' firing line for redundancy! Do yeh think anyone's goin' teh give a shit about Healthy Choices and the fuckin' Fourth Sector when the economy's goin' down the crapper?!"

They avert their eyes as he marches into the ladies, slamming the door behind him. Nicola is kneeling in one of the cubicles, vomiting extravagantly into the toilet. He groans. "For fuck's sake Nic'la, am I going to have to watch you spew literally as well as metaphorically?!"

She's too engaged in alternately retching and gasping for air to answer him. He runs his hands through his hair. The job has been particularly shitty recently and this is the last thing he needs.

The door to the bathroom opens and Terri steps in. Malcolm advances on her. "Get the fuck out! Does it look as though this room is available for general use? This is not the only toilet in the building. Shift your fuckin' lazy arse for once and go to another floor! Or use the gents - you already look like a drag queen."

Terri stares at him. "There's no need to be rude Malcolm, you're the one who's not supposed to-"

"Are you no' listening to me? Get out before I rip yer bladder out and use it as a water balloon."

"Yes, all right, all right, I'm going."

The door bangs shut behind her and Malcolm turns his attention back to Nicola, who is still retching. There doesn’t seem to be much left in her stomach because she’s mainly bringing up bile and moaning pitifully. It occurs to him that maybe there is actually something wrong with her - either some kind of pestilence that she's picked up from her germ infested children and is in the process of liberally expelling into DoSAC's air conditioning system, or a genuine nervous breakdown.

"Yeh all right Nic'la?"

After a few moments more the heaving subsides and she sinks back onto her ankles, gasping, with her head resting on the toilet seat. It is the most disgusting, unsanitary position he can imagine. His skin crawls as he places his hand under her arm and helps her to her feet. He's mentally identifying where the nearest bottle of hand sanitiser is as he tells her "Come on, wash yer face and have a drink."

He leads her to the wash basin and she obediently scoops water into her mouth, swilling it around and then spitting it out. That done, she sinks to the floor, her back against the wall and her head buried in her knees.

Malcolm hovers over her. "Christ, that was like the fuckin' Exorcist. Are you going to start spinning yer head and pleasurin’ yerself with a crucifix next?"

Nicola laces her fingers in her hair and groans, but otherwise doesn't react. Somehow her obvious distress has neutralised his anger. “Go home and sort yerself out. Yer no fuckin’ use to anyone in this state.”

He helps her to stand. She's trembling like a leaf and there is a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Nicola clutches his forearms as she finds her balance but steadfastly avoids making eye contact with him, only mutters a feeble "I'm sorry." 

"Call the Minister's car round," he instructs Ollie as he propels her gently towards her office. "She'll be out of the office this afternoon."

* * *

“Malcolm, could I have a word?” asks Glenn when Nicola has departed on wobbly legs.

“What have yeh done now?”

“In private,” he insists, tilting his head towards Nicola's dressing room as though he's having some kind if seizure.

Malcolm gives an exaggerated sigh. "Aye, come on then." He closes the door on Terri and Ollie's curious stares and turns to face Glenn, who looks so uptight it's a miracle he doesn't snap. "What is it?"

“Something’s wrong with Nicola,” Glenn tells him.

“Aye, I had noticed. She just spent ten minutes doin' a fuckin' Linda Blair impression.”

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about – although she has been looking a bit peaky recently. She’s been behaving oddly.”

Malcolm raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know if yeh’d noticed, but she’s hardly a model of consistency. Except maybe in her ability to consistently do fuckin’ stupid things instead of engaging her brain.”

“This is different,” Glenn insists. “She’s withdrawn and distracted. She keeps going off by herself. And she’s fluffing appearances that she should be able to handle.”

“I’d noticed,” Malcolm confirms darkly. “Wha’ happened at that school this morning?”

Glenn sighs and closes his eyes briefly, as though trying to block out a traumatic memory. “She had a complete meltdown. It came out of nowhere – the visit was actually going quite well up until that point. One minute she was talking to the children about the books her kids enjoy and the next minute she was hyperventilating. It was bloody terrifying.”

Malcolm can picture the flap Glenn would get himself into trying to calm down a hysterical Nicola. Although he’s well-intentioned, he’s not over-endowed with interpersonal skills. Not that Terri or Ollie would have managed to do a better job. “Did she explain what happened?”

“No, she just told me to fuck off and mind my own business.”

Not an uncommon tactic when Nicola has personal problems, Malcolm’s learnt. And this is starting to look very much a personal problem rather than a professional one. “And what about the other stuff – Women’s Hour and fuckin’ PM's Qs. Have yeh tried askin’ her about what the hell happened?”

“No, I thought it might be better if you did.”

He barks a laugh. “Wha’ makes yeh think that? I’m hardly a fuckin’ counsellor.”

“You and she get on.”

Malcolm gives him a look that conveys exactly how ridiculous this notion is. “Were yeh not in the same room just now when I was tearing pieces off her and grinding them into the carpet?”

“You know what I mean.”

Glenn looks increasingly uncomfortable as Malcolm continues to glare at him. “No, I don’t.”

“You look out for each other,” he stutters. “She’s the only person who doesn’t seem afraid of you – most of the time, anyway. You helped her out with that situation with her husband. She trusts you.”

The wizened old bugger’s obviously been paying more attention than he had given him credit for. Malcolm doesn’t really have friends – the closest he’d had was Jamie and that ended in betrayal and vicious retribution. But Nicola has wormed her way into his affections. Inexplicably, she seems to feel a level of concern for his welfare in return. Even though he spends a reasonable amount the time they spend together chewing her out for being a fucking idiot. Even his annoyance with her since the launch party incident is born mainly out of frustration that she's forgiven her cuntfaced twat of a husband so easily.  “Aye, well did I not say she doesn’t engage her brain? She’s too stupid to be afraid of me.”

“I’m genuinely worried about her, Malcolm,” Glenn tells him with a doleful look that most closely resembles a bloodhound. “What if there’s something seriously wrong?”

For any of the subhuman cretins DoSAC seems to attract to have noticed that something is wrong it must be monumentally fucked up, Malcolm realises. He regards him for a moment longer and then nods. “All right. I’ll talk to her tomorrow. If she hasn't vomited up her own entrails in the night.”

Glenn reaches out and almost pats Malcolm’s shoulder, but thinks better of it at the last minute. He lets his arm drop to his side. “Thanks Malcolm. I’d feel much better if you did.”

When Glenn has shuffled back to his desk like a constipated penguin, Malcolm allows himself a long suffering sigh. Jesus Christ, ever since that woman bumbled into his life with her over-loud clothes and her ridiculous ideas, it’s descended into a fucking soap opera.


	3. Why are you telling me this?

"Sam, what's this 10:30 in my diary?!" Malcolm demands, stalking into his PA's office after the 8.30 Meeting.

Sam glances up from her screen, unfazed by such an abrupt greeting from her boss. By Tucker standards it's practically polite. "Nicola Murray asked for an appointment. She didn't say what it was about."

" _She_ asked for an appointment? No' one of the spads?" That someone has made an appointment to see him is in itself surprising. Very few people get around to scheduling time to see Malcolm - he prefers pre-emptive missile strikes to sitting around waiting for the enemy to engage. That Nicola has made one is enough to set a hundred sirens ringing in his head. She has been actively avoiding both him and his office for weeks - she hasn't even been making any of her surreptitious food drops. After yesterday’s bollocking/vomiting escapade, he was certain that she would escalate her avoidance tactics and he’d have to drag her out of an air conditioning duct the next time he wanted to speak to her. The fact that she’s actively seeking him out must mean that Glenn was right after all: something is wrong.

"How did she sound? Panicky? Was she hyperventilating? Crying?"

"She emailed," Sam says, swivelling her screen so that Malcolm can read Nicola's message. One line: _"Sam, I need to speak to Malcolm this morning. Please could you arrange a meeting for a convenient time. Nicola_." Sent at 4:51 am.

The email’s unusually curt for someone as incurably polite as Nicola, and no one ever sends a casual email at that time of day. She’s obviously been lying awake stewing about something.

"Do yeh have any idea what she wants? Any little steaming turds about the place she's been tryin’ to cover up?"

Sam shakes her head. "None that I know of. DoSAC's been pretty quiet since that business with her husband. Except for those interviews - which you already know about."

Malcolm has the same impression, which does nothing to reassure him. "Well, if the Minister's comin’ all this way just to see me, we'd better provide refreshments."

* * *

Nicola arrives five minutes early. Malcolm waves her in and gestures for her to take a seat while he finishes his phone call with Geoff Holhurst. The tiny headed imbecile has been making noises about pushing another IT contract his son's way and Malcolm is determined to put the kybosh on either the contract or Geoff's balls.

While he volleys obscene threats down the phone Malcolm watches Nicola. She is sitting primly, her legs crossed at the ankle and her hands folded in her lap. She looks exhausted. He shoves the tea tray and the tin of Fortnum & Mason Earl Grey shortbread that Sam had managed to rustle up from somewhere towards her. Nicola eyes them listlessly and then drops her gaze to her lap, fidgeting with her wedding ring.

"Geoff, I'm going to give yeh some time to think it over. If yeh still want to go ahead I'll be expecting your dismembered cock and testicles in a Jiffy bag on my desk tomorrow mornin’." He slams the phone down hard enough that it falls out of its cradle. Nicola jumps.

"Nicola Murray,” he greets her, replacing the phone more gently. “You’re not going to projectile vomit again are yeh, because I’ve just had my carpet cleaned."

Nicola shakes her head, her eyes looking at a point about half a foot to the right of his head. “I’ll try to contain myself.”

Now that he’s looking at her properly for the first time in weeks, he sees that there are deep shadows under her eyes and tight lines of tension in her face that can’t be attributed to resting glum face, or even humiliation at embarrassing herself in public not once but three times in the space of seven days. "Yeh look like crap."

Her response is lacklustre. "You can hardly talk. There are corpses with more colour."

"Aye, but I'm Scottish." He knows from the red eyed, whey faced reflection that stares back at him from the mirror that he looks like shit. It's been that way for so long now that he's accepted that it's permanent. It has its advantages - the fact that he looks like the undead only adds to his fearsomeness.

"I haven't been sleeping," Nicola admits.

"It shows." If she were anyone else in Whitehall he would finish the bollocking that he started yesterday, probably with some added commentary about the fact that she looks as though she has a terminal disease. Christ, by all rights he still owes her a grilling for the stunt she and cuntface had pulled in the junk room at the Regional Development Initiative launch. But because it’s Nicola he finds himself compelled to ask: "What's been keepin' you awake then?"

Her hands don't cease from the agitated twisting of her wedding ring. He wonders if she’s even aware she’s doing it. "I need your help."

He raises an eyebrow. "Jesus, it must be fuckin' bad - yeh've never  _asked_  for my help before."

"It's--" Nicola's voice trails off, her gaze unfocused.

"Rugger Bugger hasn't been puttin' it about again has he?"

She shakes her head.

"Has Ella finally been expelled? Katie shacked up with a fuckin' drug dealer? Christ knows your family's like a time bomb waiting to go off."

"No, nothing like that."

"Well come on, spit it out. Whatever the fuck it is, it can't be worse than what I'm imaginin' right now."

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Her mouth moves soundlessly several times, as though she’s rehearsing the statement, before she whispers: “I’m pregnant.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” He leaps out of his chair. He was wrong. It's much worse than what he had been imagining. He has to move – has to pace out the surge of undifferentiated emotion that surges up in him. He tries to think of a response but he’s rendered speechless, something he can only recall happening a handful of times in his life.

Nicola stares at him with apprehension, her knuckles white from grasping her hands together.

His mind gives up trying to understand what he feels and defaults to the emotion it knows best. “For fuck’s sake, have you not fuckin’ heard of contraception Nic’la?! Yeh’ve already filled the world with enough of your and Rugger Bugger’s toxic DNA to reverse human evolution! More to the point, have yeh not heard that yer husband's a cheating scum bag with a face like a pig's arse?” She actually flinches at his words, shrinking into her chair, and Malcolm tells himself that if she consistently refuses to accept the truth about her husband then it’s her own fault she gets hurt. And then he chastises himself for being a heartless piece of shit.

“I’m sorry.” Her words are little more than a tremulous whisper.

It’s her frightened expression that jolts him back into a more rational state of mind. He sinks back into his chair and rubs the back of his neck. A thought occurs to him. "Is it yer husband's?"

Nicola’s eyes widen in surprise. "Yes of course it is, you bloody tosser!"

He’s pleased to note that she’s still capable of righteous indignation, although he isn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed at the news that the child is James’s. He filters through the responses that spring to mind until he finds one that doesn’t make him sound like a heartless bastard. “What does Rugger Bugger have to say about it?”

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t know.”

He can’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. “You’re tellin’ me before you tell him?”

“I don’t _want_ him to know.” She’s still avoiding meeting his eye. It’s like talking to a child that knows she’s done something wrong and is waiting to be punished.

“Well he’s goin’ to figure it out sooner or later, Nic’la. Even he’ll put two and two together when yeh start looking' like yeh've swallowed a beach ball. Or if not then, he’ll definitely notice somethin’s up when baby number 5 pops out. What are yeh goin’ to do, hide it in a drawer and raise it like a house elf?”

She shrinks even further into her chair and he decides maybe berating her isn’t the most useful tactic. “Why don’t yeh want to tell him?” he asks in a softer voice.

Nicola presses shaking fingertips against her mouth and he can tell by the glistening of her eyes that she is trying not to cry. “Because he’ll be so _fucking_ smug. He always is. He’ll see the fact that he’s managed to sire another child as confirmation that he’s a macho alpha male - especially after that bloody article. He’ll be boasting about it to his horrible mates at the club and-“ she stops, drawing in something that’s half way between a breath and a sob. “And I can’t _bear_ it.”

“Aye, but what else can yeh expect from a caveman?”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s not just that. I can’t bear _any_ of it.”

He sighs. “I’m not followin’ Nic’la. What are yeh tryin’ to say?”

She speaks in such an anguished rush that there’s a time delay between hearing the sounds and his brain decoding them into intelligible words. “I’m scared of being pregnant again. It was exhausting having Josh at 38 never mind having a baby in my forties, and Josh wasn’t an easy delivery and the consultant said that if I had another pregnancy there would be a high risk of complications, and the press will have a field day - ‘haha Nicola Murray, her husband cheated on her and now he’s knocked her up and haha she's a geriatric mum’ and…” she pauses, breathless from her own rambling. When she resumes her voice is a miserable whisper. “And I can’t bear to bring another one of that man’s children into the world.”

They sit for a moment in the silence that follows this outpouring of honesty. He doesn’t even know where to begin answering. Eventually he manages “So you don’t want to keep it?”

Nicola shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“Why are yeh tellin’ _me_? Isn’t this the kind of thing yeh talk to yer Mum about, or one of yer girly friends?” Women know how to deal with this stuff. Fearsome spin doctors whose first instinct in the face of any obstacle is to find something to eviscerate do not.

She’s twisting her wedding ring again, tugging at it so hard that he wouldn’t be surprised if she yanked her finger off. “Because I don’t want their bloody sympathy - or their ‘I told you so’s. I’ve already made up my mind what to do, but…but I don’t know how. If I go to the NHS it'll almost certainly get leaked and if I use the medical insurance James will see the claim and I…” her breath hitches. “I don’t want to be in the papers as the Cabinet Minister that killed her baby. You always say that if I fuck up I should come straight to you.” She looks up, making eye contact for the first time since she came into the room. “So this is me coming to you.”

Her gaze is tentative and afraid, and it's a hundred times more devastating than anything that’s ever happened to him before. She’s right: that’s exactly what he always says, and this is exactly the kind of shit he meant, and she’s done exactly as he asked. She _trusts_ him to help her. Trusts him more than anyone else she knows, apparently. He finds that he _desperately_ wants to justify her faith in him. He wants to be the person that somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, she believes him to be.

“Aye, well you’ve done the right thing.”

“Really?” she asks uncertainly.

He nods. “Yeh, really. Christ, I’ve dealt with worse problems that this before breakfast. I’ll sort it out.”

Her eyes well with tears. He leans forward and places his hand palm up on the desk. “It’ll be all righ’ Nic’la, I promise. I won’t let anything bad happen to yeh.”

Nicola takes his proffered hand, squeezing it as though she is clinging on for dear life. “I know.”

* * *

Although he feels a louse for doing it, Malcolm sends her back to DoSAC. "Glenn's already convinced somethin's up with yeh," he explains. "Try act as normal as possible. Tell them that I gave you a roastin' and sent yeh back with yer tail between your legs. The state yer in they'll believe yeh."

Nicola nods. "What do I do about..." her hand flutters to her abdomen.

"Nothin'. I'll make the arrangements. Wait 'til yeh hear from me."

She nods. "Thank you," she whispers.

Sam gives Nicola a sympathetic smile as she leaves his office. "What did she want?" she asks when Nicola has disappeared down the corridor.

"Tryin' to get in my good books by comin' to me teh apologise about that school fiasco rather than waitin' for me to find her."

"From the look of her, it didn't work," Sam observes wryly.

"Aye, she should really know better by now. If anyone else comes lookin' for me tell them to fuck off - my superpowers need time to recharge before the next shit grenade explodes."

"Of course."

His privacy assured, Malcolm shuts himself in his office and starts rooting through his filing cabinet.

 


	4. Nothing, nothing is going right

A week later, Malcolm is sitting in the lobby of a private hospital in Leeds. Nicola sits next to him, one hand clenching the arm of her chair and the other worrying the hem of her skirt.  

It had been simple enough to arrange. One of the junior ministers from the Home Office conveniently had to pull out of a planned trip at the last minute, and the Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship graciously agreed to step in and take his place. Earlier in the day Nicola had attended a citizenship ceremony and the following morning she will give an address at the Leeds University Student Union. Malcolm is accompanying her because after her recent performances, everyone agrees that she cannot be trusted alone in public.  

In between engagements, Nicola Hillman has an appointment at a hospital in Roundhay. It’s part of a very expensive, very discrete group of private hospitals. Malcolm has used them to help clear up various messes in the past – from unwanted pregnancies to nervous breakdowns and difficult-to-explain-away injuries. In exchange for prompt payment of their eye-watering fees, they will treat most problems without asking any awkward questions, and their reputation turns on the assurance of absolute confidentiality. 

Nicola adds foot tapping to her agitation. In an attempt to distract her from fidgeting, which she has been doing constantly since they set out from London that morning and is starting to get on his nerves, he tries talking to her. “Do yeh want me to wait here for you?” 

She looks at him blankly. “What?” 

“While yeh have yer appointment. Do you want me to wait here?” 

“Oh. No. I don’t know how long I’ll be. You should go to the hotel.” 

He places a stilling hand on her arm. “Stop fussin’.” 

“I’m not fussing.” 

“Yeh haven’t sat fuckin’ still all day.” 

Nicola stops fidgeting with her hands and places her palms on her knees. “I’m scared,” she admits. 

“Mrs Hillman?” calls the receptionist. It takes them both a moment to remember that Nicola’s appointment has been made under her maiden name. 

“That’s me,” Nicola says, jumping to her feet and wiping her hands on her skirt.  

If the receptionist recognises Nicola she gives no sign. The hospital has far more noteworthy celebrities through its doors on a daily basis than cabinet ministers. “Doctor Watts is ready for you now.” 

Malcolm sees the panicky, uncertain expression on Nicola’s face. He stands too. “It’s okay if you change yer mind,” he tells her quietly. 

“No,” she shakes her head. “I can’t.”  

This assertion seems to galvanize her. She walks towards the doorway the receptionist is directing her to without a backwards glance. 

* * *

Malcolm has Elvis take him to the hotel, and then sends the car back to the hospital to wait for Nicola. He’d asked Sam to book them a decent place to stay – somewhere comfortable and quiet. She’d found a country house about ten miles outside the city with manicured gardens and a health spa. In other circumstances it would be a nice place for a break. 

He catches up on the phone calls and emails that he has neglected during the day. At seven o’clock he goes looking for Nicola to see whether she wants to get some dinner in the hotel restaurant. The receptionist assures him that she has checked in, but she isn’t in her room. She also isn’t in the lounge, the spa or the grounds. He finds her sitting at the bar, half way through a glass of what looks like gin and tonic. 

“What are you doin’?” 

Nicola looks at him defiantly. “Getting drunk.” 

“Is that a good idea in your-” he waves his hand vaguely as he searches for the right word. “-condition.” He finishes lamely. 

She gives a humourless laugh. “It’s probably the most sensible idea given my  _condition_. God knows I can’t face it sober.” 

Malcolm studies her determined expression. He has no idea what kind of medication they’ve given her, but he has to trust that she’s not completely reckless with her own welfare. However, he does believe that, left to her own devices, she’s capable of self-destructing spectacularly this evening. “All right, come on then,” he says, taking her elbow and tugging her off her stool. 

“Come on where?” she demands, her arm tensing under his hand. 

“Upstairs. If yer goin’ to get shitfaced yer not doing it in public.” 

She considers for a moment and then nods in agreement. “All right. Good.” 

They go up to Nicola’s room and amalgamate the contents of their mini-bars. Being an up market hotel, this gives them an extortionately priced collection of artisan spirits, mini bottles of wine and high end mixers. Nicola surveys the collection. “Let’s start with the champagne, shall we?” she says bitterly. 

At Malcolm’s insistence they order from room service. If she’s going to go down this route then he at least wants her to have some food inside her. Even if it is a poncy pear and blue cheese pizza. 

Nicola picks at her food and works her way determinedly through her champagne and then two glasses of white wine in the time it takes Malcolm to finish his own champagne. “Slow down,” he tells her as she gulps down the last of her wine and reaches for a miniature of gin. “It’s not going anywhere.” 

Nicola glares at him. “If you’re going to be all concerned and sensible you can just piss off.” 

“Yer going’ to be sick if you carry on this fast and I’m no’ cleanin’ up after you. Pace yerself.” 

Nicola mixes herself a gin and tonic, but sips at it rather than gulping. “I’ve never seen you get drunk,” she says contemplatively. “I don’t think I’ve even seen you drink before. _Do_ you drink?” 

“Aye, but no’ when I’m working. I’ve got to be ready for whenever one of you lot takes a proverbial shit on the carpet.” 

“Aren’t you working tonight?” she asks, gesturing to his near-empty glass. 

He looks at her, all crumpled clothes and miserable expression. There aren’t many people he would be doing this for. Actually, he’s not sure he can think of any – possibly Sam if she asked, but she never would. “No. I’m just keepin’ you company.” 

Her lips flatten in a weak approximation of a smile. “Thanks.” 

Malcolm pours himself a Scotch and helps himself to another slice of pizza. 

“When you drink, you probably do it alone in your dressing gown with the curtains shut, don’t you?” she says contemplatively. 

He doesn't know where these occasional, intuitive leaps of hers come from but they can be alarmingly astute. Malcolm’s drinking is all or nothing. ‘Nothing’ being a token half glass of something at a public event, and ‘all’ being the solitary, single minded consumption of the best part of a bottle of spirits. When Jamie defected he drank himself unconscious in his office. Sam found him the next morning with the imprint of a mobile phone in his cheek. Since then he’s been careful to confine such binges to home. “I usually leave the curtains open if it’s daytime.” 

She frowns. “That’s really sad Malcolm.” 

“Aye, well at least if I drink at home I don’t wake up wonderin’ whether I broke someone’s nose the night before.” 

“That was once!” she says indignantly. “And like you said, I probably didn’t. James _is_  very tall.” 

He decides it’s time to be honest with her. Frankly he’s a little surprised she hasn’t already figured it out. “You definitely didn’t break his nose, because I did.” 

She stares at him open mouthed. “What?” 

“After I dropped yeh off I waited for James to get home and I headbutted him.” 

Nicola’s eyes are wide. “You headb—Why?” 

“Because yeh were cryin’ and bleedin’ from the head!  _I_  had to take you home while  _he_  was doin’ Sambuca shots with spads. He treats yeh like shit, Nic’la.” 

"So? I don't see you beating up other ministers' partners." 

"Other ministers aren't married to complete  _cunts,"_ he tells her with venom. 

She examines him with that opaque, appraising look she turns on him sometimes. “Why do you care so much?” 

He sighs. “Because I don’t like watchin’ a fuckin’ seventeen stone rugby player bully a woman half his size. And Christ help me, when yer no’ fuckin’ up yer an all right person.” 

Nicola hunches forward and stares into her glass, swirling the contents around, but doesn’t seem inclined to comment on this. 

“What happened to yer shoes that night anyway?” he asks, trying to steer the conversation onto safer ground. 

“I took them off and threw them at James.” 

Malcolm guffaws, almost spitting out his drink. James had alluded to as much once but he hadn’t taken it completely seriously. Malcolm had been just about to seize him by the neck at the time, so he was hardly a reliable source. “Really?” 

She nods confirmation. “The storming off wouldn’t have been as dramatic if I’d gone back for them. One of the waitresses probably nicked them. Or the spads,” she adds darkly. “Which is a shame, because they were L. K. Bennett.” 

“The shame is that yer aim wasn’t better.” 

Nicola says nothing, just takes a deep sip of her drink. 

“Are you an’ he getting’ on better?” Malcolm asks. “The last time I saw yeh together it was like a fuckin’ Ron Jeremy film.” 

Nicola blushes and takes a large mouthful of her drink. “We’ve always been quite sexually compatible - when he's not drunk. Or high. Or sleeping with somebody else.” 

“I’m not askin’ about yer fuckin’ sex life! Christ, I already know far more about it than I want to. I’m askin’ if he’s still bein’ a cunt.” 

“Oh.” She shrugs. “He’s on his best behaviour. It’s a bit creepy actually. He’s been doing laundry and taking the kids out at the weekend. Josh asked me if I thought he’d been replaced by an alien the other day.” 

He barks a laugh. “Doesn’t say much when a fuckin’ five year old thinks there’s something wrong because his Dad’s behavin’ like a decent human being.” 

Nicola doesn't share his mirth. “Katie won’t talk to him," she tells him in a strained voice. "She’s not talking to me very much either. She thinks I should have thrown him out.” 

There’s no point in telling her he agrees with Katie – she already knows. “Aye, she’ll settle down. Everythin’ always seems worse at that age.” 

“Know a lot about teenage girls, do you?” she asks, and he's not sure whether the sharpness of her tone masks anger or defensiveness. 

“I don’t know anythin’ about girls, but even I was a fuckin’ teenager once.” 

Nicola shifts uncomfortably, pulling a cushion into her lap and hugging it tightly. “I bet you were a bloody nightmare.” 

“Aye, your kids are far better behaved than I ever was. Even sweary Ella." 

"She wasn't sweary until you made her go to that shit school," Nicola tells him with a glower. He's accepted that she will never forgive him for that. Given everything that's happened since, he wonders whether she would still choose Ella's school over Rugger Bugger's job if she was offered the same choice again. 

"James is being a really good dad at the moment," she continues. "The kind of dad I always wanted him to be. Josh and Tilly love spending time with him, and I think he's realising how rewarding kids can be if you just pay them some attention." 

Malcolm wonders if James has also started to realise how rewarding wives can be if you just pay them some fucking attention. It was a lesson he'd learnt too late to save his own marriage. "Yeh don't seem very happy about it," he observes. 

"No, I am." 

"But?" He prompts, holding her gaze. 

Nicola clutches the cushion more closely to her. "I am happy. I'm happier than I've been in years. But there's this little voice in the back of my head that keeps asking how long it's going to last." 

"Is that the same little voice that doesnae want another child with him?" 

She winces at the question. "There are lots of reasons I can't have this child," she mumbles, reaching forward to pour herself another drink. Her hand is shaking.

"I know," he says in a placatory tone. 

"I never thought I would have an abortion," she says quietly, placing a steadying second hand on her glass and taking a gulp of her drink. "I'm not against it in principle, but I..." her left hand flexes over her abdomen. "I didn't think I would be able to know that there was a life inside me and make the choice to end it. Especially after I became a parent. I..."  

Her voice trails off and he flounders for a response. "Yer doin' it for the right reasons," he says eventually. 

Nicola bites out a humourless laugh. "I'm doing it for bloody  _selfish_ reasons. I'm doing it because I'm scared - as though my feelings matter more than a child. A child that should be able to rely on me to  _protect_  it!" 

"Don't be so hard on yerself Nic'la." 

She grimaces and moans, and at first he thinks it's in response to what he's said. But when he sees the tight lines of tension around her eyes and mouth he realises that she is in pain. As the evening’s gone on her posture has become more and more hunched. Now she’s almost doubled over, her hand pressed to her abdomen. 

“Wha’s wrong?” 

“It hurts,” she tells him, her voice almost a groan. 

“Is that meant to happen?”  

Nicola nods. “My body’s killing my baby - of course it fucking hurts.” 

Maybe he should have tried harder to stop her drinking. She was already melancholic enough. “Did they give you any painkillers at the clinic?” 

“In my handbag,” she says through gritted teeth. 

He retrieves the medication and takes the opportunity to replace the gin in her glass with water. “Here, take this.” 

She swallows the tablet and resumes her hunched posture, hands pressed to her belly as she rocks backwards and forwards. Malcolm kneels down in front of her, trying to catch her eye. “Yeh okay?” 

She shakes her head, biting her lip. “No. No, everything’s gone wrong.” 

“It’s all right, Nic’la.” 

“No it’s not!” she bangs her fists on her thighs for emphasis. “It’s not all right! Everything’s a fucking mess.” 

He places his hands over her tightly clenched fists. "Listen to me," he tells her. "Yer doin' what yeh think is for the best. You  _always_ do what yeh think is for the best." 

"And I'm always  _wrong_." 

"Yer a good person Nic'la." 

She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes shut. "I'm not, I'm a fucking disaster zone. Everything I touch turns to shit." 

"Nothin's goin' to shit - not if I have anythin' to do with it." 

"It's too late." There are tears running from under her clenched eyelids. "It already has." 

Malcolm places a hand on her shoulder. "Come here," he says, tugging her into a hug. "It's not as bad as it seems at the moment."

She clutches him, her fingers digging painfully into his back. Her face is pressed into his shoulder and he cradles the back of her head gently as she sobs into his shirt. "Shhh. You'll be all right Nic'la, I promise." 

"How can I be?"  

She cries for a long time. Malcolm lets her, rubbing her back with his other hand. He's surprised at how quickly his awkwardness evaporates - his attention is too focused on trying to sense how she is to feel embarrassed about the fact that he is cradling the country's most incompetent cabinet minister in his arms while she sobs loudly into his shirt. Eventually her grip on his back slackens and he feels her body start to go limp against his. 

"You okay?" He asks, pushing her gently back into a seated position so he can see her face. She nods, but her eyes are glassy and unfocused, and he can tell from the way she leans heavily into his hands that he's holding her up. "Are yeh feelin' sleepy?" 

Nicola nods again. When she speaks her voice is slow and slightly slurred. "Must be the tablets." 

"Aye, an' the drink, an' the stress." He should have checked the label on those tablets before he gave them to her – God only knows how they interact with alcohol. Hell, he should have stopped her drinking so much in the first place. "Why don't yeh lie down for a while, eh?" 

"Okay." 

She moves as though to lie on the sofa but he stills her. "For Christ's sake not on the couch, it'll knacker yer back. Ye'll be more comfortable on the bed."  

With his help she stumbles to the bed and collapses onto it. Malcolm rearranges the covers so that they are over her rather than under her. She's struggling to keep her eyes open. "Lie on yer side," he encourages, still worried about what the cocktail of painkillers, abortifacients and alcohol she's taken might do to her.  

Nicola curls up obediently, clutching a handful of bedspread to her. Her face is still crumpled into a frown. "Does it still hurt?" he asks. 

"A bit," she slurs. "Not as much." 

"Get some sleep, it might help," he tells her, although he can see that she's already not so much asleep as drifting in and out of unconsciousness. 

It feels like a bad idea to leave her straight away - he's still not convinced that she might not stop breathing or have a fit or choke on her own vomit. He tidies the room, heaping their plates and empty bottles onto the room service tray and putting it into the corridor, washing the glasses and stacking the undrunk bottles back in the mini-bar. Nicola's overnight bag lies unopened on the bag stand, and he takes her dress and jacket from it and hangs them in the wardrobe so that they won't be crumpled the following morning.  

Her breathing has evened out and her fierce grip on the bedspread slackened when he checks on her again. She's probably all right - physically at least, but he still can't bring himself to leave. He realises that he just doesn't want her to be alone tonight. He's the only person in the world who knows what she's going through and he won't abandon her to face it alone. So Malcolm goes to his room, collects a book and the bedspread, and stretches himself out on the uncomfortably proportioned couch of Nicola Murray's hotel room. 


	5. That old north wind begins to blow

Malcolm wakes up with shooting pains down his right arm, a crick in his neck and Nicola Murray staring at him. She is sitting up in bed, still wearing her – now very rumpled - dress from the day before. 

"What's time is it?" He asks, groaning as he levers himself upright. His neck is not at all appreciative of the angle at which it has been resting on the armrest of the sofa for the last...

"Just after seven."

...for the last five hours. He had stayed awake for a long time after Nicola fell asleep. He'd soon abandoned any pretence of reading about the Stalinist propaganda machine and instead lain listening to the sound of her breathing. Or rather, listening to make sure that she hadn't stopped breathing. Eventually, as Nicola had moved from irregular gasps and sighs to deep, rhythmic breaths, he had been lulled to sleep. Now they sit staring at each, both still in yesterday’s suits. Malcolm is suddenly, acutely aware that he is in someone else's bedroom.

"How're yeh feeling?" he asks, reaching for one of his shoes and bending down to slide it onto his socked foot.

"All right.” He raises an eyebrow. “Better than last night anyway," she qualifies.

"Tha's better than nothin’." He reaches for the other shoe, annoyed at the way he fumbles tying the laces. It must be referred clumsiness from whatever the hell sleeping with his head on a rock-hard armrest has done to his neck.

"Did..." There's a rustle. He glances up he sees that Nicola has drawn the bedcovers up to her shoulders so that only her head pokes out above them. "Did you stay here all night?"

He's spooked her. He can understand why. Last night, keeping an eye on her seemed like the most sensible thing to do. In the milky light of morning it feels...awkward. There is no other scenario he can conceive of in which he would have done the same thing for another MP. If it was any of the other twats he would have left them propped in the recovery position and booked an early morning wake up call to punish them for being drunk and drugged while on official business.  “Aye, well yeh were off yer face. I didn’t want a dead minister on my hands.”

Nicola’s expression is closed and unreadable. “The Director of Communications spending the night in a minister’s bedroom isn’t much better.”

“Don’t worry about that love, no one’s goin’ teh believe I’d get up to any naughty business with  _you_.” Even to him, the attempt to lighten the atmosphere falls flat.

She rolls her eyes. “Of course, you’d never stoop that low.  But I’d rather you left now anyway. Just in case.”

He can’t quite meet her eye. “Aye. For once in yer political career yer actually talkin’ some sense.”

So he goes. Back to the bedroom that he hasn’t slept in - he hasn’t even opened his overnight bag except to take his book out of the side pocket. The book which, he belatedly realises, he has left in Nicola’s room. 

The clean shirt he extracts from his case is a crumpled mess. He irons it in his underpants while watching BBC Breakfast, catching  up on the twelve hours of the news cycle he has missed. It confirms to him that Tom is a PR disaster and the Opposition are looking frighteningly credible these days. 

He unmakes his bed before he goes down to breakfast, just in case a fame hungry chambermaid has ideas about selling gossip to the tabloids. He’s pretty sure that most West Yorkshire chambermaids don’t know who the Prime Minister is, let alone the Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Citizenship, but you can never be too careful. 

When Nicola and he cross paths in the breakfast room, he in a crisp shirt and she in her creaseless dress, they barely say a word to each other. Nicola forces down a slice of toast while reading over her Student Union speech and talking points. Malcolm fires off apocalyptic emails between mouthfuls of a ‘full Yorkshire' breakfast.

While he’s slicing his Harrogate sausage and Yarm black pudding he takes a surreptitious look at her. She has more colour than the previous evening, but her posture is still hunched and her right arm folded across her belly. “Have yeh taken any painkillers this mornin’?”

Nicola glances up, taking a moment to process his words. “No,” she says eventually.

“Do it. Gettin’ you through a public speakin’ engagement’s hard enough on a good day.”

It’s almost comforting to see her sullen frown. “Fine, I’ll take one when I brush my teeth.”

“Good.” They finish their meal in silence and then Malcolm excuses himself to make some abusive phone calls.

* * *

Nicola does a passable job at the Student Union. If she’s a tad wooden and uninspiring, it could as easily be put down to nerves as a hangover or painkillers or grief. They buy sandwiches from an Italian bakery across the road from the university and set off straight away. If they have a clear run they can be back in London by six, and neither of them has any desire to drag out the trip for longer than necessary. 

Nicola spends most of the car journey working through the contents of her despatch boxes with apparently ferocious concentration. The atmosphere is so tense that he wonders if Elvis can feel it. It’s the kind of dense heaviness that hangs in the air after an argument. Except that they haven't been arguing - they’ve barely even spoken since Nicola blurted out all her fears, insecurities and self-loathing the previous evening. If it wasn't clear before – and with Nicola he’s learnt never to assume that the blindingly obvious is clear – then she must have realised now that whatever this strange understanding that has developed between them is, it has crossed the line from professional relationship to something else. Malcolm isn’t emotionally literate enough to understand what the something else is on his part: pity? Fondness? Protectiveness? Whatever it is, it’s inconvenient and decidedly un-Tuckerish.

It's late May and the first truly sunny day of the summer. Although he has a groaning inbox and several bush fires to manage, he spends most of the journey watching the scenery of the M1 flit past the window. Signs for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the National Space Centre, Gulliver’s Kingdom and Hardwick Hall. Power stations, miles and miles of orange clad road crews working on the central reservation, and a services sign advertising what must be the last Wimpy in the country. It's hypnotic. 

* * *

He doesn't realise he has fallen asleep until Nicola is waking him up with a tentative hand on his arm. “What’s wrong?” he asks, jerking upright so violently that she flinches away.

“Nothing. It's just that we're nearly there.”

Sure enough they are crawling through the dodgy bit of Nicola's constituency that gives way to the leafy Victorian villas in which she lives.

“You um...you've got some drool on your shirt.” She points to her own shoulder, indicating the spot. “I tried to put a tissue under it but you kept blowing it away.”

“For Christ's sake.” He tugs his shirt so that he can see it, and realises that it’s not a patch of dribble so much as a lake of saliva. “Yeh could have woken me.”

“I didn't know if you'd want me to. You looked tired. And...well, you were quite grumpy earlier.”

“I'm always fuckin' grumpy. It's my personality.” But he knows that the prospect of being trapped in a car with an irritated Malcolm Tucker for five hours is most MP’s idea of hell, bested only by the prospect of having to spend time on the company of the general public.

The car turns into a tree-lined street and Nicola starts fidgeting, packing her papers into her despatch box and smoothing the creases out of her skirt. Her hands are trembling.

“Yeh alright?”

She nods. “Yes, fine.” But her breathing is loud and raspy, and he can tell she’s barely holding back panic.

“What’re yeh worried about?”

“I’m not worried,” she insists shrilly, and there’s no use in pointing out how obviously untrue it is.

“Aye, well make sure yer ready to go tomorrow, yeah? We need some uncontroversial headlines and free exercise classes fit the bill. Healthy Choices gets shot into fuckin’ outer space tomorrow. Let’s just hope that twat Ollie hasn’t shat all over it while yeh’ve been away.”

“Yes, yes, alright.” She’s not listening. Her eyes are fixed on her gentrified home as the car approaches. 

“And Glenn’s going teh need some input on the Fourth Sector thing too, or his heart’s goin’ to give out.”

She doesn’t even answer as the car pulls to a stop outside the house. She presses the heel of her hand to her sternum, taking a couple of deep breaths. Her face is white.

“Nic’la?”

“It’s nothing.” She places her hand on the door handle, then snatches it back as if it’s hot. She sinks into her seat. “I can’t do it. I can’t go inside. I’m not ready.”

“There’s no rush. Get yer breath.”

The universe hasn’t finished making him look a fool today, because before the last word is out of his mouth the front door opens and Josh bursts out, sprinting towards the car. He is wearing a batman T-shirt and waving a toy Batmobile. 

“Mummy! Look what Daddy got me!” 

Nicola looks at Malcolm with desperation.

“I can tell them yeh’ve been called away,” he offers.

Josh reaches the car and knocks on the window, leaving smudged handprints on the gleaming glass. Behind him, James emerges from the house with a tea towel flung over his shoulder. Nicola whimpers.

“I’m serious Nic’la. I can say that a massive clusterfuck’s just dropped and an emergency Cabinet meeting’s been called.”

Nicola’s gaze darts between him, Josh and James, her eyes wide.

“Mummy!” yells Josh, banging on the window again.

This seems to make up her mind. She shakes her head. “No, no it’s all right. I’m just being silly.” 

She releases the door catch and opens it, careful not to hit Josh with the door.

“Mummy!” She’s barely climbed out of the car before Josh has launched himself at her. She staggers backwards at the force of his body aimed at her midsection. 

“Hello lovely.” Nicola lifts him into a hug, burying her face into his hair. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.”

Malcolm gets out of the car, carrying Nicola’s despatch box and handbag round to the pavement.

“Have you had fun with Daddy?” she asks.

“Yeah!” the enthusiasm in Josh's voice is barely contained. “It was great. We made a batcave in the study and Daddy let me paint Action Man like the Joker.”

There's a note of unmasked alarm in Nicola's voice. “You didn’t get paint on the floor did you?” she asks, looking between Josh and James.

“Don’t worry,” chuckles James, joining them on the pavement. “The parquet's safe - we put newspaper down first.” He places his arm around Nicola, who still holds Josh clutched tight to her, and kisses the top of her head. “How was Leeds?”

Malcolm opens the boot of the car to retrieve the rest of Nicola’s bags. He hears her mutter “Not great.”

James rubs her shoulder. “Poor Nicky, you look tired. We’ll have a quiet evening tonight. I've just got some chicken out - I thought we could have a barbecue. Tilly wants to make a marinade and Josh is going to help me cook.”

Josh twists around in Nicola’s arms, his grin showing how excited he is about this prospect. “Are you going to have dinner with us Mr Tucker?”

Malcolm places the rest of Nicola’s luggage on the pavement and shuts the boot. “Ah, no. I’ve got other things to take care of.”

“Aliens?”

Malcolm taps the side of his nose with his finger. “Top secret. I can’t be tellin’ yeh anythin’, can I?”

Josh taps his own nose. “Okay. But remember I know karate.”

“Aye, I’ll bear it in mind.”

Josh scrambles down from Nicola’s arms and pushes his Batmobile into her hands. “I’m going to take the secret boxes inside.” He hefts one of the despatch boxes. It’s so heavy that he has to carry it two handed, thrown over his shoulder to stop it trailing on the ground. There is more than a shade of Nicola in his stubborn determination as he staggers towards the house.

Nicola makes to pick up the rest of her bags but James stills her with a hand on her arm. “I’ll bring these in. You go in. Kick your shoes off and open a bottle of wine.”

She looks uncertainly between James and Malcolm. “Are you sure?”

“Of course,” James tells her with a reassuring smile and a squeeze of her shoulder. 

It’s the first exchange Malcolm has seen between the two of them when James hasn’t been behaving like a dick. He has to admit that the guy does a passable impression of a human being. How long he can keep it up is another question. Malcolm’s torn between offering Nicola the escape route that she’d seemed to want a few minutes earlier and leaving her with her family. 

“Get some rest,” he tells her finally. “Healthy Choices needs a fuckin’ PRG up its arse tomorrow.” 

Nicola nods. “Bye Malcolm.” She walks towards the house, shoulders slumped and the Batmobile hanging forlornly from her hand. 

They both wait until she’s pulled the front door to behind her before speaking. James’ hostile expression mirrors the one Malcolm knows is on his own face. 

He has to admit that the benefit of cutting out alcohol, drugs and prostitutes shows on James. Whereas Malcolm looks like the walking dead these days and has a river of drool on his crumpled shirt, James looks rested and fresh faced in his crisp chinos and Hugo Boss shirt.

“You’re quite the domestic goddess, aren’t yeh? Get yerself a frilly apron and yeh could be taken for Nigella Lawson.”

“I’m spending more time with my family - just as you suggested. There’s no need to be snide about it.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” Malcolm reminds him. “It was a fuckin’ order.”

James rolls his eyes in a manner that a teenager might accompany with a groan of  _whatever_. “Of course - you are famed for having the leadership style of a South American despot. But really Malcolm, I do wish you’d go easy on Nicky for once - she looks exhausted. And utterly miserable.”

The insinuation that Malcolm is the cause of Nicola’s misery – as opposed to James and the fucking mess he has made of their marriage – riles him. “She hasn’t been on holiday! She wasn’t in Leeds for a fuckin’ mid-week break! I’m still plastering over the fuckin’ seismic trench you’ve ripped open - _that’s_ what’s making her fuckin' miserable.”

James chooses to ignore this swipe at him. “If you shout at her she just gets stressed,” he tells him, as though this wasn’t apparent to anyone who has spent five minutes in Nicola’s company. “It’s not the best way of motivating her.”

“Aye, and what is?” asks Malcolm. “Neglect? Smacking her head against the fuckin’ wall every now and then to keep her in line?”

It’s the first time Malcolm’s ever seen James look genuinely angry. He’s usually disinterested in the way that only someone who has lived a life too privileged to suffer the consequences of his actions can be. But at this insinuation his features darken and he backs Malcolm up against the car, crowding him with his bulk. His voice is tight and dangerously quiet. “I have _never_ hit Nicola. Unlike you, I’m not violent - I don’t _need_ to break people’s noses to make my point.”

Malcolm squares his shoulders and shoves his face towards James’. He’s not going to be intimidated by a meat-headed public school tosser. “Even me acquainting’ your septum with yer frontal lobe before the coke rotted them both away didn’t get the message across though, did it? Yeh  _still_ ended up splashed all over the Sunday papers. You’re too stupid to listen to anyone else - yer a fuckin’ cul de sac in human evolution. A tapeworm’s more use than you, because at least it’ll stop you getting’ fuckin’ diabetes while it’s suckin’ the life out of yeh.”

They stare at each other for a moment, the early evening air close and heavy between them. 

“You’re the most unpleasant human being I’ve ever met,” says James. He takes a step backward, allowing some of the tension to deflate. “I’ve got better things to do than waste time on this conversation. My family are waiting for me so that we can have dinner together.” He bends down to pick up Nicola’s handbag, overnight bag and remaining despatch box. 

“Aye, yeh’ve got a lot of missed family time to make up for. Best get started before the oldest one leaves home.”

“Enjoy your meal for one in front of the telly, Malcolm,” James tells him with infuriating calm as he heads up the garden path. “Don’t strain your wrist.”

“Fuck off!”

“With pleasure,” he calls over his shoulder.

Malcolm glares at James’ receding back. Through the bay window he can see Nicola watching them, a glass of wine hugged to her chest. Her face is obscured by shadow. The blue front door closes behind James and Nicola’s head turns in the direction of the hall, as though someone is speaking from another room. She nods and walks into the dark interior of the house without looking back.

Malcolm smacks his fist against the back of the car a couple of times until Elvis darts out and politely asks him to desist. The driver is fiercely possessive of his fleet car. The only time Malcolm’s ever seen him lose his temper was when a cyclist clipped his wing mirror. Malcolm can understand this: he frequently experiences flights of murderous fantasy about cyclists. But he doesn’t want to piss off another Government driver – half of them already refuse to take him as a passenger - so he holds up his hands in submission.

“Sorry pal, I’ll leave the car alone. Just wanted to make sure that twat’s reflection didn’t get scorched into the paintwork.”

* * *

His house feels cold. He’s tidy by nature, but this evening the gleaming, uncluttered surfaces and neutral colour scheme seem sterile rather than calming. He dumps his bag on the hall floor and goes through to the living room, scattering the carefully aligned row of cushions on the sofa and toppling the neat stacks of back issues of the Economist and Private Eye.

 It still feels soulless. Now it’s just soulless and messier.

He’s restless and weary at the same time. He has a sense of something being unfinished. He can’t shake the image of Nicola’s silhouette at the window, watching him from the impenetrable depths of the house. He can almost feel the warmth of her body pressed against him as she sobbed into his shoulder. She has a smell that he had never noticed before: some kind of musky floral perfume mixed with soap. It’s still in his nostrils.

He collapses on the couch, shading his eyes with the crook of his elbow. He imagines what the Murray family must be doing at this moment – the children laughing over a ball game, James turning kebabs on the barbecue, Nicola tossing a salad and laughing at some inane joke he’s made. All the while, the evening sun bathes their suburban garden in hyper-saturated technicolour. 

There’s a mountain of work that he should be doing, but here he is slouched in his bland, empty house thinking about a frumpy, incompetent minister whose cabinet career is surely numbered in months rather than years. Meanwhile, the Government is one match away from going down in flames and taking everything that he’s worked for in the last twenty years with it. Groaning, he pushes himself to his feet. He should be going to his jacket, reaching for his Blackberry, trying to get the train back on the tracks. Instead he crosses to the cabinet and takes out a bottle of Scotch and a tumbler. For one evening, he wants to forget about the hollow mess that his life has become.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story hasn't ended as I expected - or as you might have hoped for. But there is a sequel in the works.


End file.
